


Learning to Breathe

by HDLynn



Series: The Caretaker Series [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Din and the kid’s Caregiver have a bad day, Din has some realizations, Emotions are Complicated, F/M, Life & Death Situations, Loopholes, Protective!Din, Teamwork, cursing, some mentions of medical treatments, some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24373888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HDLynn/pseuds/HDLynn
Summary: Din and the Kid's Caregiver run into some trouble and Din struggles to keep them both safe and alive.
Relationships: Din Djarin & Reader, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV) & Reader
Series: The Caretaker Series [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1720672
Comments: 6
Kudos: 123





	Learning to Breathe

Din was not exactly sure how, but everything had gone very sideways. Bounties normally went underground or tried to run when they knew someone was trailing them, not kriffing try to ambush him and the kid’s caretaker while they had been in the market on a quick ration run. It was only supposed to take ten, maybe fifteen minutes, but, thank Maker, the kid had been left to sleep on the Razor Crest because of the heavy rain.

So that left him to protect the kid's caretaker, and make sure he wasn’t shot in the back at the same time. It should have been fine.

But now it was over an hour later of playing cat and mouse with these fuckers. They had barreled into the woods right outside of town to shake them, but every time he started to think they had done so, the kriffing bastards were back on their trail again.

So, here they were, near the edge of a cliff, by a raging river, and taking cover behind a rather ancient tree. He had been so focused on keeping them both alive he hadn’t seen he was headed into a dead end. Di’kut, he cursed himself silently. He had to figure out some way of getting them out of this situation. But, as the blaster fire kept zipping by so close to their shelter, he was uncharacteristically drawing a blank.

Every time his brain started to latch onto a possible idea, it was dismissed as either too foolhardy or just not possible. Of course, today of all days he had decided to not kit out his jetpack, because why did he need that when getting food packs? And he kept being distracted by the terrified whimpers coming out of her each time he had to press them further into the hollow of the tree when a particular blaster shot came too close for even his beskar-covered comfort.

She was scared and yet trying to keep calm so not to become a hindrance to him. Even so, the feeling of her trembling against him overwhelmed Din with a horrible sense of uncharacteristic fear. Not for himself but for her. If he was taken out, he didn’t even want to imagine what would happen to her and the kid.

A blaster bolt finally caught him and he grunted in pain as fire shot through his upper arm, right beneath where his pauldron ended. Automatically moving in close again, no longer thinking about crushing her against the thick, rough bark of the tree. They were figuratively stuck between a rock and a hard place, but instead it was a tree and an overfilled river running through a gorge.

“Kriffing, I…” Din said as he trailed off, his mind blank.

“Mando,” she said hesitantly.

He didn’t respond, still concentrating on the enemies trying to take potshots. But he tilted his helmet slightly towards her voice in a tiny movement, hoping she knew he was listening.

“If we can’t go back that way, we should use the gorge.”

He started at that. “What?” he spluttered.

“As long as you can swim, of course,” she said. He wasn't sure where this bravado was coming from in her, but he liked it.

“Of course I can swim,” he scoffed, offense at the insinuation coming even through his helmet’s voice modulator.

“Perfect, simple plan then. We need a distraction to cover us as we run over, we jump in and swim downstream.”

“Yeah, simple,” Din sassed. “Let me just come up with a distraction out of thin air and then we can drown in the spring swollen river.”

“If anyone can think of a distraction, it would be you,” she pushed back, fully confident in him even now.

They were interrupted by another round of blaster shots and Din turned slightly to get more into the safety of the tree. When one shot pinged off his shoulder armor, the brightness of the sparks that came off him blinded her for a moment. She meeped and instinctively tried to hide her eyes, which, since he had turned into her, meant Din now had her face shoved in the fabric gathered right around his neck. He could feel the warmth of her breath even through the layers he was wearing. Din huffed awkwardly at the suddenly more intimate position, but there was a chuckle hidden in there as well because he did have an idea now.

“Now that you mention it,” he said, finishing his thought non-verbally when he held up a detonation charge. “Wait for my signal and then we run.”

His signal ended up being grabbing her hand in his large gloved one after throwing the detonator through the trees towards the attackers. He had the timing down by heart and he had them moving the exact moment it blew.

Dirt and stones rained around them as they surged toward the cliff edge. No time to think, they jumped the moment they had come to the edge, it was better that way. Like ripping a bandaid off in one go. As they fell, Din felt his clever girl grip his hand even tighter as if daring him to let go.

~*~

If Din hadn’t been mentally prepared for the icy temperature of the water, he would have instinctively gasped in a mouthful of water as they landed in the river. The water came from the high peaks of nearby mountains and thus was filled with the cold runoff from the higher elevations. The current was strong and the river deep, and he had almost immediately felt her hand be ripped from his grasp, her fear-filled grip taking his glove with her.

It was a struggle for him to break through the surface as the water quickly pushed him further downstream. When he did break water, he had to take one deep breath before going right back under as a blaster shot hit near his helmet.

He cursed silently as he was bashed into submerged items, each jolt trying to steal the breath he had won. They had to get out of this fast.

The next breath did not have a blaster shot coming at him. Keeping his head up, Din could see that he had been swept down past a bend in the gorge and was out of range for the moment. The current having calmed since the river was wider at this juncture, he turned his attention to finding his charge. Turning on his heat signature-finding software in his helmet, he dove back under.

Seconds ticked past and he could not see anything in the rushing water. His lungs started to burn and he had to return to the surface. Haar'chak! He dove back under, now worried that she had come up too early and had been shot. But no, finally there was a heat signature a couple of yards from him. When he finally got over to her she was limp in the water, one of her feet having lodged in the crook of a submerged tree.

Din struggled to free her foot against the current and, with his lungs screaming, he finally was able to break the limb and she was freed. Grabbing her around the waist, he made for the surface and began swimming to the shoreline. She wasn’t responding at all, her skin a horrible tinge of blue-grey and she was so limp.

Gedet'ye, gedet'ye, gedet'ye. He pled with the maker silently, even though he isn’t sure exactly what he was asking for.

Stumbling over rocks and debris, he pulled her onto the shore and started to see what the damage was. A badly sprained ankle, shallow head wound, lacerations on her face, but those were incidental. He didn’t think she was breathing. Ripping off his remaining glove, Din went to take her pulse and leaned down to put his helmet to her forehead. He waited a few moments and found a thready pulse, but no breath fogged up the visor of his helmet. As he checked her vitals, the pulse disappeared. He fumbled, trying to find a better angle to feel the artery in her neck to no avail. There was no heartbeat, there was nothing

She wasn’t dying, she was dead. He was too late.

Din heard a strangled sound and it took him a moment to realize the noise was coming from him.

As he knelt there, panic and despair flooding his veins, a memory forced its way to the forefront of his thoughts. He was suddenly back to that day IG-11 had pointed out one very important fact about his creed. He should have thought of it sooner. His clever girl was better than him with seeing such things. He was an idiot.

He couldn’t take the helmet off in front of any living being. She was dead, but not un-saveable.

Din had never ripped his helmet off so fast in his life.

Maker, he had only seen someone rescued from having drowned close up once on Sorgan — when a kid fell in one of the ponds — but he had to try. He started to do chest compressions and alternate those with rescue breathing. He had no idea how long he was at it, but suddenly he heard a gurgle from her before she started to spew out water and vomit. Din helped move her to her side so she didn’t choke, firmly patting and rubbing her back through it all, her body trembling uncontrollably from the violence of it.

“There, there, I have you,” he rambled out soothing words as best he could. “Cough it all up, good. You’re doing good, you’re safe. I got you, cyar’ika. I got you.”

Once he was certain she was breathing well enough on her own, he turned to slip the helmet back on and slumped down as all the adrenaline he had been running on fled his body, leaving him feeling weak and unsteady.

He felt, more than saw, her turn back towards him even as she still hacked.

“Y-your cre-creed?!” she gasped out between breaths. Seven hells and all the stars, even after all that her first thought was worry for him, for his kriffing oaths.

Din let out a sharp barking laugh, “Don’t worry about it.” The words tasted bitter in his mouth, of bile and fear. His voice again distorted by the modulator as he looked back at her, but even he could hear how his voice crackle with emotion. “No oaths broken, you were technically dead.”

She, somehow, had humor still to laugh at him even as she coughed and stuttered. “Loo-loopholes, Mando? Not what I expec-expected from you, but thank you all the s-same.” She reached out with her right hand only for both of them is discover she was still holding onto his glove from when they had jumped into the river. It made his heart twist terribly. He had almost failed her, lost her, while she had held on as tightly as she could.

“My name is Din,” he heard himself say as he took the glove back, unable to ignore the feel of his rough calloused hand on her softer one. He hadn’t meant for those words to come out, but they had come anyways, an unbidden attempt at what? Some sort of need for connection? He didn’t have the emotional range to unpack that right now so he immediately changed the subject.

“How are your ribs?” he asked, grimacing to himself at the brusk tone, and the subject whiplash he was putting her through as he took the glove back. Fidgeting with it for a moment, he ended up not putting it back on yet. Instead, he reached for its twin and stuffed them in his utility belt, leaving his hands bare.

She was confused and hesitant for a moment. She swallowed before looking down at her hands and away from him.

“I don’t know…can you help me sit?” she asked, her voice small, hesitant.  
His hand, warm and ungloved, automatically found its way to her back and helped her sit up with a gentleness that spoke louder than his verbal bruskness. Even taking care, she gasped in pain, one of her hands flying to her aching breastbone and she bite out a curse that would make a hardened spice runner blush.

Din took her chin in his hand and gently tilted so he could check the head wound. It wasn’t life-threatening, confirming his original assessment. However, since it was a head wound, it was bleeding a lot. A hot slick of bright blood running down her scalp and neck.

He then tilted her head so that she was looking right into the blackened glass of his visor, right into his eyes. Din’s grip tightened a tiny bit on her chin and she let out a shaking breath. They sat there still for several long moments before he let go, the feel of her skin lingering on his fingers like the touch of silk.

“You don’t seem to have a concussion,” Din said as he put his gloves back on and stood up. “But we need to get moving, I don’t have medical supplies to patch you up here.”

She took his proffered hand, the leather separating them again.

~*~

When they got back to the ship, Din found the kid awake and keeping himself entertained with the small collection of toys he’d gotten from his buir and the caretaker.

Turning back to his injured charge, he ordered her to sit down and he busied himself with cleaning her up, taking off his gloves again to have better control over some of the finer work needed. She had acquiesced to his medical attention easily, he could tell her was more exhausted than he was.

She couldn’t keep her eyes open as he took her chin in his left hand. To keep her from jerking away, he told himself, as he carefully applied bacta spray to the gash on her head, a cut on her nose, and the nasty scrape and bruise combo on her cheekbone. Her ankle was swollen, but a compress would do the trick for that. He could feel her shiver in pain and saw her hands clench into tight fists when the spray stung badly. He wasn’t even thinking when he instinctively found himself moving his thumb in gentle circles on her jaw to comfort her. She instantly let out a small breathy sigh, leaning into his touch, melting into the tiny gesture. It caused the tight feeling in his chest from before to return.

He let go of her as soon as he was done with the bacta. He also had prepared an electrolyte and bacta infused drink for her, as well.

“Drink this, tastes like shit, but it will help with dehydration and any internal injuries that I…that I might have given you when I was resuscitating you,” he said dully, it hit him all over again that she had kriffing died.

He couldn’t think of any other words so he just forced the cup into her hands. That was just a bad idea, as well, for her hands brushed his when she took the cup from him, the softness of her fingertips on his own bare hand sending a type of electric shock up him and leaving an oddly pleasant sensation running over his scalp.

The face she made was a testament to how foul the mixture was, but she drank it all even though she had to choke it down.

“That’s fucking horrible,” she gasped out. Din filled the cup again, this time with water so she could try and chase the taste away.

When that was done, he had checked on the gash again and then, finding it well on the mend, ordered her into the refresher to clean up. The bacta had made quick work of the wound on her scalp. It was nothing like the head injury he had gotten on Nevarro so that was a blessing.

Din was unable to relax until he heard the sound of the door locking and the shower turn on. He knew he had a little while to himself now, a few minutes at least. He lowered himself down onto a chair and, with unsteady hands, pulled the helmet from his head for the second time that day. With a shaking, breath he set it down on the table beside the medical instruments he had been using moments before. The blank visor looked back at him, it didn’t look at him in an accusatory manner but it was an enigma he was unable to decipher.

All Din could do was cover his face with his hands, feeling completely overwhelmed. Then, he vigorously, to the point of discomfort, started scrubbing his hands through his helmet flattened hair making it all stick up on end. It was a desperate attempt to rid himself of the tingling sensations still running along his scalp and down his back. He lied to himself that it helped.

He stilled, breathing heavily, before he pushed himself into something familiar: patching himself up. He started with his head, thankfully he just had a bruise beginning to form on his chin from hitting it on something in the river most likely.

Din took off the other pieces of his armor and placed them on the table. He winced when he moved in such a way that it pulled at the blaster wound on the side of his arm. He also noticed a rather large gash on his back. The pain didn’t hit him until he had peeled his shirt off to get a better assessment of the wound.

Fuck, it was deep and taking the shirt off had just started the bleeding again. At least, if it was bleeding, that would help flush out any debris in the wound. Even still, he flushed the wound with an antiseptic rinse until he was sure it was clean enough and picked up the cauterizer. He didn’t see any reason to use bacta spray on this kind of wound on himself. Her facial wounds were another matter, but he didn’t give a shit if he was adding another scar to his collection. What was one more if he could save some bacta? He put the helmet back on since he wasn’t sure how long this would take and he didn’t want to deal with any accidents right now.

Din was in the middle of trying to contort himself to be able to have better access to the wound on his back when he felt more than saw she standing behind him. She looking more awake after showering and was wearing clean clothes and socks.

His brain immediately gave him a word for her, but this word wasn’t mirdala, it was cyar’ika. He froze at that word, realizing that was exactly what he had called her after pulling her out of the river.

“Need a hand?”

“I got it,” Din forced out automatically. He was more than used to taking care of his wounds on his own as the need arose.

“Mando…Din, it is the least I can do seeing as you did save my life earlier,” she said with a look that was somehow amused and unyielding at the same time.

He sat frozen for a moment, his brain replaying how she said his name. She hadn’t used it until this moment and with how the word sounded on her tongue…he didn’t have it in himself right now to argue with her. Not when his name sounded so secure coming from her lips, a concept that didn’t make any logical sense and yet it still did make complete sense to his tired mind.

He paused in his work with a heavy sigh, pretending to be more put upon than he was. He was very sure she knew that he wasn’t sincere in his show of gruffness because she gave a bit of a smirk at it. She knew she had won, he had no argument against her helping that would make any logical sense. He wasn’t about to tell her he was nervous about someone touching him. No, specifically her touching him.

So, he held the cauterizer out and pretended to not notice the light brush of her fingertips against his own. He felt like a coiled spring of roiling emotions and he wasn’t sure which one was the strongest at the moment. He slid into instruction mode.

“First, there are strength settings from one to ten on this side.” He showed her the slider settings. “Just leave it about four or five for human skin, higher and you’ll just end up burning a hole through me,” Din said with a wince. He had tried using the same cauterizer when it had accidentally been set at a seven once. He still had the twisted and deeply pocked scar on his upper thigh to show for it. The higher settings were calibrated for races with much tougher exteriors than humans had. He hadn’t made that mistake ever again.

“Gotcha,” she said, her face a portrait in concentration.

“This button here will turn it on. You have to hold it down the entire time you are cauterizing otherwise it automatically turns off for safety.” Din was suddenly reminded of a time that safety feature had been handy. He had passed out halfway through closing a particularly painful wound over his ribs a few years back. He had been very happy the cauterizer had immediately turned off when that had happened considering that he had woken up with the damn thing in his lap right above…well, above an area that would have been very painful to have burned.

Maybe it would be a good thing for someone to help him sometimes, Din thought to himself. He might not the best person to be giving himself triage treatment alone all the time if his track record was brought into the equation.

“I already cleaned the wound out so you just need to hold it closed, as best you can, while you cauterize it.” He swiveled slightly away to give her a better angle to work even as he kept his head turned a bit to keep an eye on things.

She looked at the tool and back to the wound on Din’s shoulder, and he saw her go slightly green for a moment before taking a steadying breath and carrying on.

Her hand was cool and gentle on his skin. Somehow gentle even as she firmly held the wound closed, not at all like some of the few times he had received medical help from others. Those times were usually rushed and sometimes even in the middle of a small lull in combat if necessary. Gentleness was not a high priority in such moments or his general profession.

But he knew in this moment of vulnerability, in being so bare in front of another, that he was safe in her hands. Just like his name was safe in her mouth.

~*~*~  
Di’kut - idiot  
Haar'chak! - Damn it!  
Gedet'ye - please  
Cyar’ika - sweetheart  
Mirdala - clever


End file.
